Boycott law causes big shift in Israel’s image

Israel’s image in the United States has long been that of the lonely democracy in an Arab sea of tyranny.  But the anti-boycott bill recently passed in the Israeli Knesset–which comes right after the Arab democratic uprisings exploded conventional myths about the Middle East–is radically changing that image.

Omar Barghouti, a leading activist in the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, aptly predicted this change in a May 2011 interview. He said that “If this anti-BDS measure passes into law, Israel will have dropped one of its last veneers or masks of ‘democracy,’ fully exposing itself as an irreparable system of colonial and racist oppression that requires much of the same treatment used against South African apartheid.”

This recent New York Times editorial, which gives a nod to the BDS movement, is the best example of this process:

Israel’s reputation as a vibrant democracy has been seriously tarnished by a new law intended to stifle outspoken critics of its occupation of the West Bank.

They are relatively tame words, but it is a significant editorial coming from the New York Times.

The Jewish-American establishment has also taken notice.  Jeffrey Goldberg has blasted the law.  The Anti-Defamation League’s Abraham Foxman released a statement criticizing the law:

We are…concerned that this law may unduly impinge on the basic democratic rights of Israelis to freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

And then there’s the U.S. State Department, which, although mildly, criticized the bill by saying that “Freedom of expression, including freedom to peacefully organize and protest, is a basic right under democracy.”

With the Knesset considering bills to curtail the power of the Israeli Supreme Court and to establish committees to investigate Israeli human rights organizations, expect the further ripping apart of Israel’s image as a democracy.

+972 Magazine: Boycott law will affect international activists

The anti-boycott bill that the Israeli Knesset passed yesterday will principally affect those Israelis who call for boycotts of Israel or illegal settlements in occupied Palestine.  But how will it affect the global Palestine solidarity movement, and those who advocate for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) that target Israel?

Noam Sheizaf at the excellent +972 Magazine has an important “reader’s guide” up where he is taking questions on the anti-boycott bill.  I asked him to address the question of whether international BDS activists will be affected by the new law.  My question:

International activists have, following the Palestinian call, been leading the BDS movement and calling for boycotts of Israel. While I have not seen any language concerning foreign nationals in the bill, is there any indication that internationals may also be affected by the law?

The recent “air flotilla” exposed Israel’s policy of denying entry to those who openly proclaim their intent to visit occupied Palestine. Can being a BDS activist now land you in trouble at Ben-Gurion or Allenby, in the form of being denied entry?
Can someone claiming economic damage from a boycott call now attempt to sue foreign nationals or foreign organizations?

Sheizaf asked Mairav Zonszein, who is a contributor to +972 and who does media work for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, about this aspect of the law.  Here’s the response:

When in Israel, one needs to obey Israeli laws, including ones concerning damages. From what I heard from ACRI (Association of Civil Rights in Israel, which has been in the frontline of the struggle against the law), the anti-boycott law would include foreign nationals as well – as long as they make the boycott call while in Israel. One reservation is that it’s not a criminal law, so you need someone to actually sue you for damages, and the court needs to be able to collect them. My guess is that if this law remains active,  rightwing and settlers’ organizations will become serial prosecutors plaintiffs of boycottes in order to silence dissent, and, of coarse, make some money on the way.

The law doesn’t apply to foreign nationals in the West Bank, which is under military rule and not Israeli civilian law. It does apply to Israelis everywhere in the world.

The leadership of the Palestinian-led BDS movement, though, say the movement won’t be deterred by this law.

 

 

Boycott Israel Movement Creates ‘Sea Change’: An Interview with Palestinian Human Rights Activist Omar Barghouti

My interview with Omar Barghouti, a leading proponent of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, appears in the latest issue of the Indypendent.  Here’s an excerpt:

Modeled on the international campaign of economic and political pressure that helped bring an end to South African apartheid nearly two decades ago, the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement targeting Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories has notched notable victories of late.

Achievements include the announcement in April that the flagship London outlet of Ahava, an Israeli cosmetics company that reportedly manufactures its products in an illegal West Bank settlement, is losing its lease in response to years of protest. In February, legendary folk singer Pete Seeger joined a roster of artists honoring the boycott of Israel, including Elvis Costello, Dustin Hoffman, Gil Scott-Heron, Johnny Depp and the Pixies.

Defenders of Israel dismiss these victories as minor irritants, but the government has reacted with alarm. In February the Knesset gave initial approval to a bill criminalizing advocacy of BDS. Israeli commentators, including the influential Tel Aviv-based Reut Institute, have called the BDS movement a “strategic threat” to the state of Israel. And the United States, Israel’s patron, has joined the chorus of critics. “When academics from Israel are boycotted — this is not objecting to a policy — this is anti-Semitism,” Hannah Rosenthal, the State Department’s envoy on combating anti-Semitism, said in an April 2 speech.

Rosenthal’s statement came right after the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem approved a long-delayed visa for Omar Barghouti, a leading figure in the BDS movement. Author of the new book, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, Barghouti was forced to postpone a tour of U.S. college campuses after his visa was held up for four months. In response an international campaign bombarded the consulate with phone calls
and emails.

The attempt at scuttling Barghouti’s tour comes as no surprise in the context of increased U.S. and Israeli government scrutiny of the BDS movement’s growing popularity. Barghouti is a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, and award-winning journalist Max Blumenthal refers to Barghouti as “one of the BDS movement’s most effective strategists and promoters.”

I met up with Barghouti after his publisher, Haymarket Books, rescheduled his tour for April. Sitting in a crowded coffee shop in Manhattan, Barghouti talked about building on his experience as an anti-apartheid campaigner by focusing his attention on U.S. college campuses. “When I was in the anti-apartheid movement, we knew that we won when Columbia, Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton divested. That was the beginning of the end for the apartheid system in South Africa.”

Read the whole article here.

Palestinian anti-wall activist tortured, threatened with rape and execution by Shin Bet because of BDS activities

The Israeli government’s repression of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is growing ever more harsh.  Domestically, earlier this month, “the Knesset plenum…approved in its first reading a ‘boycott law,’ which would levy harsh punitive fines on Israelis who call for academic or economic boycotts against Israeli institutions,” according to Ha’aretz.

While the anti-boycott bill is aimed at shutting up internal Israeli calls for BDS, much more punitive measures continue to be inflicted on Palestinian activists.

Jesse Rosenfeld, reporting for Alternet, has an exclusive report on the alleged torture of Mohammad Othman, a key organizer in the non-violent resistance campaign against the West Bank separation barrier. After returning from Norway in 2009, where he met with “Norwegian socialist movements and BDS activists, as well as members of the national Parliament, including the Norwegian finance minister,” Othman was arrested at the West Bank-Jordan border.  The interview with Rosenfeld marks the first time Othman has spoken out about his conditions in prison.

Othman tells Rosenfeld that:

He was psychologically and physically tortured by Shin Bet interrogators. He highlighted how interrogators pressed him for details about his activities in the BDS campaign abroad, asked about the the grassroots Stop the Wall movement, and probed his meetings with Norwegian parliamentarians and activists.

In Israeli military court, the military prosecution tried unsuccessfully to prove that he was acting as an agent for Hezbollah. But Othman said that attempts to force him to confess to working with Hezbollah were merely a pretext to jail him and not what actually interested the Shin Bet.

“They spent over 25 days focused on trying to find out about my boycott contacts and activist contacts in Norway. They were particularly interested in talking about my work with a Jewish American woman in drafting a boycott call,” said Othman, who detailed the brutal methods his interrogators used to try to extract information and confessions from him. “I was told by an interrogator that if I’m released before their investigation is complete, that they would kill me, that they would shoot me in the head,” he recalled.

Kept in a tiny cell that could only fit a small mattress and subjected to extreme hot and cold temperatures, Othman says psychological terror gave way to physical torture. “At one point they tied me in stress positions for five hours. They showed pictures of my sisters and told me they would rape them. They threatened me with rape.”

 

 

‘Progressive Zionist’ group in U.S. calls for settlement boycott

The liberal Zionist organization Meretz USA is calling on American Jews and Israelis to boycott West Bank settlements.

While distancing itself from the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, the statement represents a significant stand among left-leaning American Zionist groups who profess their belief in the two-state solution.

Even more significant is the fact that Meretz USA is closely linked with J Street, the liberal group that has taken great pains to distance itself from the BDS movement.  Meretz USA was a partner in J Street’s first annual conference, and the Union of Progressive Zionists, which Meretz USA helped to found, was “reorganized” as J Street U, the group’s college wing.

J Street’s official position on a boycott of settlements is more nuanced than their total rejection of the Palestinian-led BDS movement, but the organization has refused to come out in support of a settlement boycott.

The February 15 statement from Meretz USA, titled “Buy Israel–Don’t Buy Settlements (They’re not the Same)” reads:

We believe it is of great importance to actively oppose the policies of Occupation and settlement while at the same time struggling to defend Israel against those seeking its destruction.  Consequently we:

• Support the actions of Israeli performers, directors and writers who refuse to participate in performances held in Ariel or any other settlement beyond the Green Line.

• Support the actions of Israeli university professors who refuse to teach at or have professional ties with institutions of higher education in Ariel or any other settlement beyond the Green Line.

• Believe that American Jews, in order to express their support for the brave Israeli citizens refusing to cooperate with settlement policy, should refuse to purchase any goods or services, including tourism services, made in or by the settlements.

• Believe that American Jews should express their support for Israel’s continued existence within the Green Line by purchasing Israeli goods and services that are made within the Green Line.

• Disagree with calls to boycott, divest from or sanction Israel proper (within the Green Line), which we believe are misguided and ineffective.  Such a broad set of actions amounts to a blunt punishment of all Israelis, rather than a targeted approach that focuses on the issue of settlements and Occupation, and is incapable of bringing those polices to an end.

• Denounce the use of BDS whenever employed as a tactic to bring an end to the State of Israel.

 

Moshe Dann’s Anti-BDS Column Attacks Movement for Appeals to Human Rights

Moshe Dann’s recent column in YNet News shows why Israel is losing the global battle against the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Dann, who also writes for the settler news outlet Arutz Sheva, writes (my emphasis):

Bedecked with ethics, law and justice, [the BDS movement] insist[s] that Israel withdraw to the 1949 Armistice lines, or 1947 UN proposed boundaries, leaving it vulnerable to terrorists. Their weapons are non-violent resistance that appeals to a sense of idealism and fair play, civil and human rights.

Yes, you read that right.  The BDS movement that seeks to “destroy Israel” advocates for non-violence and civil and human rights.  The horror!  They must be stopped.

Omar Barghouti, a leading Palestinian BDS activist who is a founding committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, recently told the delegation I was traveling with that Israel’s efforts so far against the movement are “primitive.”  He said he saw no reason to respond to their attacks as long as Israeli propaganda remains at that pitiful level.

Dann’s column shows that Barghouti is right.  The anti-BDS campaigners are stabbing themselves in the heart.  Let’s cheer them on.

 

Israeli Intransigence Lets BDS Into the Mainstream

The world is fed up with Israel, with its continued colonization of the West Bank, its continued ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, its suffocating siege of Gaza and its crackdown on nonviolent Palestinian popular resistance.  This major Human Rights Watch report exposes the infrastructure of Israeli apartheid.

Israeli intransigence on the settlements issue has provided an opening for some more mainstream endorsements of the the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

The Human Rights Watch report states:

The United States should consider suspending financing to Israel in an amount equivalent to the costs of the Israeli government’s spending in support of settlements and the discriminatory policies documented in this report, since the US’s $2.75 billion in annual military aid to Israel substantially offsets these costs.

And a week and a half ago, twenty-six former European Union leaders penned a letter that called for sanctions against Israel.

The ground’s shaking.

 

 

 

Anti-BDS Campaigners Liken Movement to Nazi Germany Policies

If you can’t beat ‘em, smear ‘em.

As the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement continues full-steam ahead in its efforts to force Israel to comply with international law, pro-Israel hawks are increasingly attempting to link the movement to anti-Semitism and Nazi Germany-era policies.

The latest person to do so is Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who has been described as “one of the most influential Jewish journalists working in mainstream media.”

Goldberg–who, ironically, recently wrote that “people reaching for insults should find something better than Nazi”–applauds today the New Israel Fund for, as he terms it, leaving the “BDS swamp.”  Goldberg writes:

Because I’m running a campaign on this blog against the cheap deployment of Nazi imagery in argument-making, I am going to resist the urge to point out that the European-centered campaign to launch an economic boycott of the world’s only majority-Jewish country smacks of something historically unpleasant, except now I didn’t resist the urge. But I do actually think it’s a fair analogy, and the BDS movement, like no other anti-Israel propaganda campaign, has sent chills down the collective Jewish spine precisely because economic boycotts have been, throughout history, used to hurt Jews. This is why I was slightly taken aback by Sokatch’s statemen that, “segments of this movement seek to undermine the existence of the state of Israel.” I would say that undermining the existence of the state of Israel is this movement’s raison d’etre.

First off:  the BDS movement is not a “European-centered campaign.”  It is a Palestinian-led civil society movement that has spread to the Western world.  Europe may have a strong Palestine solidarity movement which is increasingly racking up BDS victories, but attempting to invoke the history of European anti-Semitism by labeling the BDS movement a “European-centered campaign” falls apart because the movement is not, in fact, Europe-centric.

Goldberg, and others like him, are guilty of conflating Israel with Judaism, and Jews with Israelis.  The BDS movement is not an economic boycott directed against Jews; it is a boycott movement directed against the State of Israel, which labels itself the Jewish State, because of its flagrant violations of international law and its continued occupation of Palestinian land.  As Alisa Solomon, co-editor of Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, told me in 2009, “it’s a very dubious and dangerous collapse when ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’ are conflated.  Anti-Semites do it a lot, and unfortunately, powers of the Israeli state do it as well.”

Invoking Nazi Germany’s policy of boycotting Jewish-owned businesses as a way to smear the BDS movement is a cheap trick that has no merit.  Nazi Germany instituted a blanket boycott, with no end in sight, that was directed at a persecuted minority just because of their religious faith.  The BDS movement is targeting a state, asking Israel to comply with their obligations under international law, because of their unjust and oppressive policies towards the Palestinian people.  There are many Jewish organizations that support the movement, including inside Israel.

Ali Abunimah, the founder of the Electronic Intifada, had this to say in response to “a cartoon [found in a local Jewish group's paper] from the Israeli strip Dry Bones in which Hitler asks Satan if he believes that BDS is a replay of the Nazi program to economically strange the Jews. ‘Yup,’ Satan replies. ‘It has everything but the swastikas’”:

This ugly defamation is an insult to those who died in the Holocaust.  It cheapens their memory. It cheapens their suffering.

J Street Responds To Questions Regarding BDS Meeting with Israel’s Foreign Ministry

I should have contacted J Street and asked for further information and clarification regarding their executive director’s comments to Hadassah magazine that he held “a meeting with people from Israel’s Foreign Ministry on how to address the BDS [Boycott Divestment Sanctions] movement.”  I didn’t, and wrote something up criticizing J Street before hearing what they had to say, and I apologize for that.  Writing something up fast without thinking of getting a response from the organization you’re critiquing is not good journalism, and that’s part of the perils of blogging and not having an editor every time you publish.

Adam Horowitz, the co-editor at Mondoweiss, did contact J Street after my post was published at Mondoweiss, and received a response from the lobby group:

A spokesperson said Kane was drawing the wrong conclusions about the meeting with the Israeli Foreign Ministry if he is to suggest J Street is participaiting in an Israeli-led effort to combat the BDS movement. Rather, the statement Ben-Ami brought to the meeting was that ending the occupation would be the most effective way to counter the deligimitization efforts Israel faces.

They pointed me to the following letter to the editor in the Forward from a J Street member that they said articulated their perspective:

“Exclusion of Critics Gives Fodder to Foes

There can be no more striking illustration of the myopia and self-delusion of the organized Jewish leadership regarding global efforts to delegitimize Israel than the fact that no less than five separate panels on this subject at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly contained not a single critic of Israel’s policies (“Federations Find Youth Outreach Tricky Terrain at Yearly Meeting,” November 19).

They would have us believe that the gathering strength of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign — which, while ominous, is both ineffectual and totally one-sided — is purely a manifestation of anti-Semitism or misplaced anti-colonialism and has nothing to do with Israel’s behavior, such as its relentless expansion of settlements in the West Bank and encroachment on Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

Unless the new JFNA-sponsored Israel Action Network is prepared to acknowledge and confront Israelis and American Jews with this reality and work seriously, if quietly, to mitigate it, I fear that Israel will continue to provide fodder to those who seek to delegitimize and isolate her.

Gil Kulick New York, N.Y.”

My post did seem to imply that J Street may be working with the Israeli government to combat the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, and that was a fair assumption to make without hearing J Street explain it.  J Street has now explained, and if Jeremy Ben-Ami, their executive director, did tell the Israeli government that “ending the occupation would be the most effective way to counter the delegimitization efforts Israel faces,” then I say good for them.

 

What’s J Street Doing Meeting With Israeli Officials On BDS?

The lobby group J Street has a somewhat muddled policy on the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

An interview in which their executive director says that he’s meeting with the Israeli Foreign Ministry on “how to address” the movement adds to the confusion.

On their website, J Street explicitly says that it is “greatly concerned by the goals and tactics of the formal global BDS Movement” and that it opposes the BDS movement because “they fail explicitly to recognize Israel’s right to exist and they ignore or reject Israel’s role as a national home for the Jewish people.”

J Street was slammed by Palestine solidarity activists–including Israelis–for actively working with organizations such as the right-wing David Project, Stand With Us and the Jewish National Fund against the landmark divestment effort at the University of California, Berkeley.  After that episode, Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s executive director, said that “J Street will not be signing on to letters with organizations like that in group settings again,” apparently conceding that J Street was wrong to do so.  And last June, during a Jewish debate on the BDS movement, J Street board member Kathleen Peratis said she would support the boycotting of settlement products (although this is clearly not J Street’s position).

But in a just-published interview with Hadassah Magazine, Ben-Ami says that “this very afternoon I have a meeting with people from Israel’s Foreign Ministry on how to address the BDS [Boycott Divestment Sanctions] movement.”

What exactly is J Street doing meeting with the Israeli Foreign Ministry over how to “address” BDS?

The Israeli government has a very unconfused, clear policy on the BDS movement:  it’s a threat to the State of Israel, part of a growing “delegitimization” campaign.  And they’re actively working to neutralize it.

Last summer, the Israeli Knesset began steps to pass what Adalah, a group that works to protect the rights of Palestinian citizens living in Israel, describes as a bill “to outlaw any activities promoting any kind of boycott against Israeli organizations, individuals or products.”  And the well-connected Reut Institute, an Israeli think tank, gave a presentation to the Israeli cabinet last winter on the need to “direct substantial resources to ‘attack’ and possibly engage in criminal ‘sabotage’” against the BDS movement, as Ali Abunimah reported.

In the most recent prominent move taken against the BDS movement, the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs launched “a multimillion-dollar joint initiative to combat anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns,” according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Where does J Street stand on all of this?  Does it support the undemocratic nature of the Israeli bill that seeks to criminalize boycotts against the state?  Does it support throwing millions of dollars to undermine a campaign that seeks to ensure that the human rights of Palestinians are respected?  And just what were they meeting with the Israeli Foreign Ministry about concerning the movement?